Posted on 02/19/2023 7:20:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Social Security and Medicare are on an “unsustainable course” and will run out of funds by 2037. That’s the conclusion reached by the General Accountability Office (GAO) and the Social Security Administration.
There is no saving these programs without massive changes. And demagoguing the issue, as Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing, only delays the day of reckoning. To pretend these programs don’t need intervention now — right now — is to play with dynamite. The sooner we can get started, the less pain will be inflicted on senior citizens.
Pain there will be. In order to put these programs on the path to long-term viability, it will take political courage absent from today’s politicians.
Veronique de Rugy has been the Paul Revere on Social Security unsustainability for as long as I’ve been writing. Her article in Reason.com explains the problems with the two biggest government programs plainly and succinctly.
It’s important for people to grasp reality because no single issue will affect our fiscal future more than Social Security and Medicare. Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs are the drivers of our current and future debt. And to drive home the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.
That’s more than five times the current gross domestic product. But Biden wants to demonize Republicans for trying to address these long-term problems?
There is no political consensus on what to do about these two programs. Democrats want to raise the retirement age and charge retirees more for Medicare. That’s a bandaid that won’t even extend the viability of the programs for much more than a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Social Security only for those who paid in. Welfare only for those willing to work.
Would this work in the US?
https://fee.org/articles/how-we-privatized-social-security-in-chile/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_in_Chile#Pension_system_of_1926
Here’s the LA Times saying it doesn’t work. Just Republican wet dreams!
Why don’t we ever hear “them” say that welfare is going broke?
Something to think about.....
“Anyone who does it will be ending their political career for themselves and their party.”
This is true. Nobody is going to touch it for the reasons you stated.
” You act like stealing from people who paid in their whole lives is okay. It isn’t. “
Call it anything you wish. The program is going to effectively cut every recipients checks...atbleastbas measured by what you cab purchase with it.
One follows the other. We cannot fix it, yet we cannot pay it either.
There is no way to save these programs at all. There never was. The people who got elected making these promises knew very well that their promised systems would eventually crash - long after they were beyond earthly retribution. Their plans worked. Perhaps they are roasting in Hell now. We can hope so.
And so, here we are. The current generation of politicians are not going to fix anything. They are going to cut and run for retirement with whatever they can steal from the lobbyists and corporations who fund them.
Social Security benefits will continue to be paid for quite a while longer. Hyperinflation and taxation will make them worth almost nothing. Natural and accelerated death rates will keep the eligible population down to manageable numbers. That and raising the retirement age to 75 or 80.
People not in the system right now are going to be badly shorted and they will be rightfully pissed. Even more so as they realize that "voting" and "elections" are merely pretenses which change nothing.
Old people can be sneaky fighters, but civil war is a game for young men. They are the ones who will determine what comes next. A critical mass is very small - less than ten percent of the total population can be decisive.
The revolutionary governments which arise after the collapse will make the whole issue moot.
Parents are both physical basket cases, son diagnosed with adhd in high school, now in his thirties with zero incentive.
“Oops! Those “vaccinations” are preferentially killing off younger people who are still paying into the system.”
It is a good thing “scientists” are still witch doctors.
Hopefully affirmative action will keep them that way and they won’t be able to figure out to kill just old people—because if they could do it you know they would.
The Recovery Act and Inflation Act of Biden cut entitlements through creative bookkeeping that nobody has reduced to a headline, probably can’t. The “savings” from entitlement reduction were then “repurposed for increase in other spending.
Complexity is a major drag on the economy and cause of inflation. Inflation is best fought by increasing amount of production per person. Complex red tape
1) prevents all players, both government and private sector from experimenting with better mousetraps
2) requires all players, both government and private sector to spend more time learning, understanding, fulfilling and correcting the records
than providing the service allegedly intended.
Your post reminds me of a visit I had to a major insurance company decades ago when they had paper copies of everything in physical file cabinets.
They had one floor of a gigantic building (warehouse sized) with file cabinets as far as the eye could see in all directions next to the walls—with tax and fee filings for states and localities. The inner area of the floor was filled with hundreds of cubicles of workers who processed the filings.
They had another floor with file cabinets full of regulatory requirements/compliance records—and more hundreds of cubicles.
No actual good or service was produced on those two floors at all.
“they have no clue who’s driving or what crimes are involved.”
I remember John McCain’s solution to the Social Security financial problem. It was “It’s easy. You just tweak the knobs”.
I think changes are coming and they won’t harm the average person as our high government-caused inflation.
Cutting SS and medicare benefits to the seniors who paid into them and are dependent on them will be the opening shot in the next civil war.
There's an interesting possibility: the next Civil War may be the way that the elites will try to pare the aged from the population. After all, if the seniors take up arms in rebellion, they become targets themselves. Then the act of killing the seniors moves from "murder" to "war casualties".
This could become the 21st century equivalent of Carousel (cf Logan's Run)
Oh sure...they are “sustaining” it through unmitigated borrowing from foreign countries (mainly china and japan) that is now up to $31 trillion in debt. What a genius solution. /s
The answer is no. Sorry you probably do not like that answer, and you will get angry at that answer, but it IS the answer.
That is definitely the democrat’s “party of death” solution.
Republicans need to leave this alone if they want to keep any hope of ever having another Republican President.
There is a way to save these programs.
The government has many programs that funnel money to the same program education is one of many.
About half the departments in D.C. should be shut down many do the same operation a vast waste of money some hacks keep adding departments for the sake of another election win.
No business in the world could exist if it operated like D.C..
So instead of blathering about it why doesn’t someone say how much they would cut and for who?
Instead they make inferences and threats that just scare the hell out of everybody
Natural death rates and an increase in the eligibility age for benefits would "fix" Social Security. That is a best case, and it will never happen. The reason is because the House and Senate would need to cast recorded votes to make that happen, and the named representatives who cast votes for such measures would become targets for retaliation.
I don't mean retaliation through "elections" either.
The easy way out is to let inflation effectively reduce the value of Social Security benefits. The government can always print more money to make the checks clear. That is what they are doing. They can always blame the resulting inflation on "greedy corporations", or "the bankers", or "hoarders" and "wreckers". Or Donald Trump.
As a Gen Xer, we always knew Social Security and Medicare were going to go bankrupt before we ever collected a dime. We knew we would pay into it our whole lives only to watch it go up in smoke right before we could get anything back.
The easy way out is to let ***inflation effectively reduce*** the value of Social Security benefits.
With inflation things cost more and that means the feds receive in tax money it wouldn’t reduce the value of Social Security benefits it could add to it.
The feds have raked in record amounts of tax money in the last few years bottom line it’s a squandering issue.
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